Whom to Trust with Your Web/Mobile Project Development?

There are many alternatives to choose from when it comes to software development. Let's examine the options you have and their advantages as well as disadvantages.

OWN IT TEAM

If you can afford this option - go for it. It is convenient to have your developers near and to invest into the teamwork and relationships. Also, this works well if the security of information is in higher priority than the price.

That said, it is an expensive option because there is a lot of side costs like recruitment, HR, and administrative expenses. Also, you need to take into account that in order to find a fitting person for your team, you can't simply take into account personal traits, but also his/her technical knowledge. Therefore, either your HR would have to be tech savvy, or you have someone else who can interview this person to see if their skills match your requirements.

PRODUCT COMPANIES

They offer you ready-made solutions that you can take and use for your business (for example, Microsoft CRM Dynamics). The advantages include a user-friendly out-of-the-box program that you install and it's ready for use. Also, when your project does not require serious customizing, these kind of solutions are much cheaper than creating your own thing. But there's a but.

Universal products are hard to customize (if they can be customized at all). There are times when in the long run it might actually be cheaper to write your own program tailored to your business from the start than trying to adjust the other program.

While sometimes product companies do offer consulting services to help you understand how to integrate their product into your business, there are also times when you are alone in the ocean of code and features, with only a User Manual for help and, of course, Google.

FREELANCERS

When you need a few tasks to be done or when you want "fresh blood" in your business who would think outside of the box, freelancers are often a good choice. There are certainly a lot to choose from and often they are cheaper than the other resources. You can outsource your work to them whenever you need and there are no HR or administrative costs. Are they the perfect solution? It depends.

Keep in mind that they might not do the full cycle of development, which means you will have to hire several.

They might not be the experts you're looking for - and with the choice pool so big, there is certainly a lot of risks involved.

Teamwork is hard to achieve since you don't exactly have a team when you hire freelancers. This also affects the working schedule.

If you want to scale your business, freelancers are not the best option because it will be harder to control them.

BIG SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT COMPANIES

Ciklum, EPAM, and other companies like that are certainly great in their own right. They have big experience with all kinds of projects (due to the fact that they have a lot of people working for them), the quality is also top-notch, and they have offices throughout the world.

What can go wrong?

The quality is awesome, but the prices are also quite high.

The bigger the company, the less flexible it is.

Because they are "omnivorous," it might be hard to get a deep expertise in a specific area.

Forming a team can take a long time before the project start.

EXPERT TEAMS

Expert teams are a solution for the big software development companies' problem with experience. This is a group of professionals who have worked with similar projects like yours and they know what they are doing. The quality of the product they create is also great. However:

They are pricey.

The area of their expertise is quite narrow.

It is sometimes hard to find a team of experts that you need (since there is not a lot of such teams and they are picky about the work they have to do.)

INDIA

Because there are so many people in India, there is a large percentage of software developers. Most of the time, they attract their customers with low prices. Their prices are indeed low, however, there are several factors you should take into account if you choose them in the end.

You might be lucky and get a good quality product for cheap. However, you risk having to find someone else when you are in the midst of development process when the quality might not be up to your standards.

Big time zone difference also is a problem sometimes when you need to meet with the developers. Granted, that depends on where you live.

SMALL OFFSHORE (NEARSHORE) DEVELOPMENT COMPANY

Grossum is a small software development company with the main development office located in Kyiv, Ukraine.

What are the advantages of hiring us?

Grossum is located in Europe (Ukraine) which allows us to easily accommodate for East and West working hours.

Our prices are lower than those of the bigger market players.

We can provide consulting services along with the coding experience.

We do full-cycle development.

Because we are still a small company, this allows us to be flexible and seek the best solution for the both parties.

We can do PHP (with a special focus on Symfony projects), Java, JavaScript, Python, and many other technologies and languages.

We have worked quite a lot with mobile platforms, developing for Android, iOS, as well as cross-platform apps using Xamarin.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz has talked about the paradox of choice in one of his TED talks and he mentioned that whenever we have too many options to choose from, that actually becomes a problem and we're never satisfied. But we hope that our analysis will help you to weight options and understand their advantages and disadvantages, which, in turn, would help you make the right decision in the end.

Author: Mykola

Having worked in IT development field as a Software Engineer, Team Lead and Head of IT department for a long time, Mr. Slobodian founded Grossum in December 2013, gathering a passionate team of professionals who together work on developing a better future. Since April 2017, Mykola is the CEO of the APP Solutions web & mobile development company that has acquired Grossum. Mykola Slobodian has participated in many IT events as a speaker. Audiences varied from first graders to IT-oriented teenagers to attendees of IT conferences. He holds a Ph.D. in Physical and Mathematical Sciences, which helps him find solutions to all kinds of IT challenges, including the Internet of Things.